Chapter 1
Reunion
Pother, Ohio was a small town with a population of close to five thousand people. It was innocuous and sleepy. It was the perfect place for a hellmouth to breed below the unsuspecting people's feet. However, in a large yellow school bus headed towards the older part of town, the people within it new better. Hellmouths were deceitful, never being exactly what you expected it. No one knew this better than the survivors of the Sunnydale Hellmouth did.
The group heading for Pother was made up of one Buffy Summers. She was a petite blonde woman who had seen more evil in a regular person's lifetime. Fortunately, she wasn't a normal person. If anything, she was a person with super power strength; spidey senses and had the experiences of dying twice. She was a Slayer, the oldest so far. Her sister, Dawn Summers was a tall brunette who had seen her equal share of the dark and gloom of the world. She was not even a real person. Dawn was made from the blood of her sister by a group of monks into flesh to hide her from an evil hellgoddess by the name of Glory. To say they were a strange family was an understatement.
The other part of their group was one Xander Harris, a strong, handsome man with Geeky tendencies. However, despite his quirkiness he earned his stripes when he lost his eye in a great battle close to a year and a half ago. Beside him on the bus was a redhead woman by the name of Willow Rosenberg, another person to add to the already off the target group. She was a Wiccan with a lot of power that seduced her to do wrong when her girlfriend was shot. In fact, one of the people to aggravate her strong emotions of death and destruction was now part of their crew of mismatched miscreants. Andrew was a nerdy young man who provided the group's daily dose of annoyance. He was a friend of Warren, the guy who shot Willow's now dead girlfriend.
The last person of the group, known by all as the Scoobies, was one Rupert Giles. He was a British native but was uprooted from his home soil to watch over Buffy. He was a Watcher, someone who trained slayers to reach their full potential. Currently, he was the driver of the big yellow bus that held the Scoobies…and a bunch of teenagers besides Dawn.
"Okay listen up maggots. We're heading to a hellmouth, a place where the unnatural always occur. Remember your training and never trust the mayor. Got it?" Xander looked through his narrowed eye at the group of teenagers before him. Some of them were confused, others were amused while the rest were tired.
"Um Xan, I think that's enough." Buffy said turning to glance at him from her place in the front of the yellow bus the group were using. "We don't want them too hyped up before they dust their first vamp."
"First vamp?" exclaimed a young Asian girl with green-highlighted hair and hazel brown eyes.
"Don't worry, it'll be fine." Willow said. "Nothing too bad will happen. Hopefully…"
"Besides Ana you won't be alone in the dusting the vamp bit." Dawn, Buffy's sister added.
Ana looked worse than when she started. Dawn realized what she said and gave an apologetic glance at her. After that, a soft buzz of chatter blanketed the insides of the bus. Young men and women chatted about various topics like what they were learning, hoping to learn or their lives. Dawn had decided to make it up to Ana by gathering more information from the usually bubbly but still mysterious girl. They were talking about comic books and clothes with the group tag-along Andrew.
"Okay, I think we're here." Dawn said when the bus finally pulled to a stop in front of a large building about twelve stories tall.
"It's huge."
"Wait 'til you see the inside. It has this awesome armoury and library. Then there's this place where…" Andrew was cut off when Xander stood up.
"Slayer and Watcher Juniors, everybody out. Bring your shit and make sure this bus is clean."
"Is he always so…scary?" Ana asked whispering in Dawn's ear in order to distract people from her.
"Xander? Nah, he's a cuddly teddy bear without an eye and sometimes uses a broadsword." Dawn replied, Ana glared at her newfound friend but grinned with amusement at the analogy.
"Teddy bear without an eye, huh." She said.
The group filed into the building without too much trouble. Willow greeted a tall brunette with dark red lipstick and cool brown eyes.
"Hey Faith."
"Hiya, so this is this month's newbies?" Faith asked arching an eyebrow. "Not a lot, I can see about ten."
"Ten's a good number. How are you doing?" Buffy asked when she reached the dark haired girl.
"I'm five by five. I thought you said you located about twenty-five of them. Where is the other fifteen?"
"Later, at HQ." Came the blonde's reply.
The group of teenagers from the bus had followed the Scoobies around until they were split into five groups of two before they were led into a very nice lounge. Ana was partnered up with a young man about nineteen to her sixteen who had swishy brown hair and cold blue eyes. His name was Ice, or at least that's what he said his name was, but no one but the older Scoobies questioned him on it because he was a very intimidating person. She glanced at Dawn who gave her a smile.
"Don't worry you'll do fine besides your partner is really cute." Somehow, Ana wasn't comforted by her friend's choice of words and kept to herself throughout the whole explanation as to why she was there with everyone else. She didn't exactly want to get closer to her partner. After all, she may have highlighted her hair green and wear strange clothes that could be described by some as punk but she was no toughie. In fact, her worse fears were kittens, puppies and bunnies.
"Welcome to Burrow Garrison." Giles said in front of everyone.
"Also known as Slayer Central but that's just trivia." Andrew interjected. He was glared at and he muttered that he really should keep his thoughts to himself. Everyone ignored him and Giles continued with his speech.
"If you don't me already, my name is Rupert Giles and I'm a head watcher. You've been partnered up with the people that will most suit you both for your training. This arrangement may not be to everyone's liking but since there is an uneven amount of Slayers to Watchers, some of you have been partnered up differently."
Ana looked around and noted how true Giles was. Seven girls had been on the bus but there were only three guys. The six other girls had already broken into groups while two out of the three guys were already chummy. That left Ana with Ice by default.
"Now, I will assign you your rooms and you can get some rest." Giles began calling each group by name. Dawn glanced over at her new friend and saw the nervous look on her face.
"Ana, there's nothing to worry about. You won't have to share a bedroom with him, just an apartment. Plus you won't get to see him too often because of the schedule."
"If you're sure, oh, I got to go up now…" Ana bit her lip and Dawn gave her a hug.
"I'll come by and see how you're doing tomorrow okay. We can have lunch together or something, bring Ice with you if you can." The taller girl gave her a wink before Ana left with her silent and hostile roommate.
"Well, that went well." Willow said with a wide, easy smile.
"Yup." Dawn agreed. "I just hope Ana is okay. She looked kinda looked like Sandy after getting her ears pierced."
"Ah, Grease, how I hate thee." Xander said.
"We better get going. There's a lot to discuss." Rupert led the way to the elevators with Faith and Buffy following him. The rest of the Scooby gang followed except for Andrew who wanted to get something to eat.
"So how was Milan?" Faith asked her fellow Slayer.
"It was interesting. We met up with a demon mafia. We lost about four Slayers and three potential Watchers in that fight." Buffy replied.
"It looks like you had a kick ass time. Next time, I wanna go with you, get into the action."
"What about Robin?" Xander asked, curiously. "The last time we checked you guys were a step away from becoming rabbits."
"It died." Faith retorted. "Anyway, so what's up with you Dawn? Meet anyone interesting?"
Dawn blushed and shook her head. "Err…nothing you'd like to know. Hey, is our apartment still the same?"
"Pretty much," Faith grinned. "Kennedy moved out though."
"Did she?" Willow asked looking alarmed. "Oh, well I guess that's expected…"
"Really?" Faith asked. "Did I miss something?"
"Nah, don't think about it." Xander said. "Besides, Wil found a Mr. Right in Russia but won't tell us about him."
"Him?" Faith looked surprised and glanced at her. Willow blushed bright red.
"I – I don't think…I mean…well it's none of your business…uh…" the redhead Wiccan stuttered and looked to the ground. Everyone looked at her with varying degrees of amusement and surprise. The last time Willow had been attracted to someone of the opposite sex was when she was back in High School and dating a guy named Oz who turned out to be a werewolf.
Before Willow could get any more embarrassed, the elevator stopped at their floor and they went inside their 'headquarters'. Actually, it was more of the entire top floor dedicated for the Scooby gang decked out with five separate two-bedroom apartments, an entertainment area and a large library for research. The main offices for "Slayer Central" were on the main and second floors.
"I see, well, let's get down to business." Faith pushed through the wooden doors that blocked the entrance of their floor. Those that had their bags with them since entering the building dropped them beside the door. They took off their shoes and jackets before sitting around a large round table outfitted for meetings and other things.
"What's been happening? You reported in bringing twenty-five…I know seven died in Milan. What changed?" Faith asked, her face in a mask of indifference but Buffy knew better.
"Five slayers had already died as potentials from last year and three were tortured by a Behemoth demon. They were turned into statues before we could save them." She replied.
"Something is happening. I don't know if you guys can remember but before we killed it, the demon said about starting from the beginning." Xander said.
"Oh yeah!" Dawn took out something from her purse, which she seemed to carry with her everywhere now. Taking out a leather bound notebook she explained that it came from one of the Slayers that were tortured. It was given to her before said Slayer passed away.
"She said that it was a gift from her aunt from England. I flipped through it before and it has weird riddles. There was one about starting from the beginning to get to the end, so that someone could die not a foe but a friend. I could be wrong…but then again the girl never told me anything else about it because well…she died." Dawn continued.
"I see, did she say who her aunt was." Buffy asked and Dawn shook her head.
"Damn, so that leaves us with a mysterious notebook. What's in it anyway?" Xander reached over to flip through the pages but a blue light zapped him. "Son of a priggish man-eating manifestation of that bastard Vader." He glared at the notebook. "Are books supposed to do that? Give me vampires and demons but what the hell's up with blue light zapping books?"
"Guys I think there might be a – uh, hi Kennedy." Willow was mid-sentence when the dark haired slayer that used to be her girlfriend barged in unannounced into the room.
"Sorry to break the reunion party but some guy with a pointy wooden stick is downstairs threatening to curse us if he doesn't speak with Faith." The Latin female said.
"Pointy stick…well that's different." Xander glanced at his friends.
"Did he say what his name was?" Giles asked immediately.
"Arnold Higgins." Came her immediate response. "British like you."
"I see, bring him into one of the interrogation rooms and we'll be there to see him." He replied.
"Ookay, make it snappy, we can't fend him off for too long." Kennedy left the room without even glancing at Willow. The redhead felt hurt but that and watched while feigning indifference when she did.
"This meeting will have to continue but Dawn, since you can touch the book, research all you can on it. Wil, stay with her to see what magic's being used on it. Xander, you have to stay here to help, this shouldn't take too long. Giles, Faith and I will go see this Arnold person." Buffy said before getting up. No one really protested except maybe Dawn and Xander but all in all, everyone did as they were told. When the two Slayers and Watcher left, the remaining three set to work.
While the main Scoobies were off doing their thing, in one of the apartments on the third floor, Ana was having a fitful sleep and having dreams.
Oh by Merlin, it hurt. It hurt a lot!"GET DOWN!" screamed a boy with dark brown hair and a usually cold façade. She couldn't. The magic engulfed her fighting with her familiar magical background and the new Slayer magic that transformed her life. She could barely make out dark shapes surrounding her chanting in a strange hissing language.
"ANA!" another boy yelled but she couldn't make out he was. Before she woke all she noticed was lightning.
"Ana." Someone was yelling for her to wake up. "Fuck, get up! Wake up damn it!"
"Go away." Ana rolled over sleepily and swatted whoever it was. She wanted to see what was happening despite the horror she felt from it. She needed to know more, she knew that. It was important, very important.
However, she didn't get that luxury when her bedclothes were yanked off her and cold water was dumped over her.
"FUCKING HELL!" she screamed glaring at the perpetrator. She didn't even blush when she found it was her roommate, Ice, frowning at her in return.
"People need sleep. Stop your screaming." He said coldly before leaving the room. She threw a pillow at his retreating form.
"Not my fault you fucking lunatic!" she yelled, but after getting up to wash up and clean up the mess he left for her with the water dumping, she realized she was wearing white.
Author's Notes
I'm glad people are enjoying this fic. I hope the timelines are confusing you and hope you like Dawn's new friend. Um…can't give away too much but the same disclaimer applies. Nope I don't own a thing. Most belong to Joss Whedon and J.K. Rowling.
Interesting Facts
Behemoth is an actual demon that is mentioned in Egyptian lore and the Bible. Google it if you want to find out more.
Challenge
Figure out the pop culture references mentioned in the fic and I'll make a pretty banner or pic saying if you're right or wrong as a prize. I'll have samples posted on my live journal. Which, you can check out at www. livejournal. com / users / dontmendeasily later…it's not up yet so yeah…